


Intermission

by florisuga



Series: From the Ground Up [2]
Category: No.MERCY (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Future, Gen, astronomically high shipping fees - literally, kwangji and minkyun also make appearances, space travel and transport
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-08
Updated: 2016-10-08
Packaged: 2018-08-20 07:27:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8241286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florisuga/pseuds/florisuga
Summary: The crew is on their way through the checkpoints back to their ship, and Yoonho is watching the few remaining lights in the city and people still wandering the streets. Somewhere along the hallway, Yoosu says, "It's like walking through a museum."
Gunhee points at the precautionary sign across the hall and states, as though he is reading, "Do not touch."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to my wonderful teammates for being so fun and supportive!

Yoonho can remember pieces of his last visit to Earth, memories and images mostly reconstructed and filled in with information he's heard from other transporters or seen on television. About two years have passed since he was last planet-side, and it had only been a brief touch and go--they were hardly there long enough to refuel before they were setting off again. 

During that trip they had docked at a station located near the ocean, and before they landed, all Yoonho could see through the windows were the waves rolling into shore and the sand stretching on, untouched for _miles._

Yoonho watches the movies, sometimes, while he's on those week-long flights and months of standby before their next delivery is ready to ship. He's seen the beaches decorated with umbrellas of every color and more people than he's ever seen in one place. On that last trip, he had imagined what it must have been like to feel the sun and the breeze and the sand when it's been warming all day long. And he had wondered if there was anyone else still around who would have been able to tell him.

"It would _burn,"_ Yoosu said.

"I bet it's like walking on snow," Minkyun continued, unperturbed. "When it's fresh and new."

Gunhee scoffed. "How can you compare them when you haven't felt either?"

Yoonho jumped in and said, quick, "Let him imagine," and watched the waves break until they disappeared from view behind the station.

\---

For all that the disease has affected Yoonho's life, he has never actually seen its effects. He has heard the stories, he knows the way it sets in, insidious, shutting down everything in the body until it can no longer function. He knows the symptoms to be alert for in case he or anyone else on his ship is exposed, and the poster of safety precautions that greets them at every station whenever they disembark. But he has never known anyone who actually had it and lived through it, and as well as he knows the fallout, he doesn't know what it has done beyond the obvious. The pandemic had ravaged a world of another time, and he is one of the people delivering vaccinations that he can only assume are still effective.

His crew is on their way through the checkpoints back to their ship, and Yoonho is watching the few remaining lights in the city and people still wandering the streets. Somewhere along the hallway, Yoosu says, "It's like walking through a museum."

Gunhee points at the precautionary sign across the hall and states, as though he is reading, "Do not touch."

\--- 

"Sometimes I forget what fresh air smells like," Yoonho confesses to Seokwon in the middle of the night. He's not sure why he says it out loud, other than the fact that he is still feeling the lag from their flight and caged in their ship. The tea he's nursing does nothing to help.

Seokwon pats his shoulder and offers a look of sympathy. He says, "I don't know what it smells like at all."

"I know you don't," Yoonho tells him, because of course Seokwon wouldn't know--an android assigned to delivery service would have no reason for olfactory programming. "It wouldn't make any sense."

They both laugh, but it is empty, and tired, and nothing about what either of them said is funny.

\---

Excitement comes in the form of guessing the contents of packages that they transport back to the home station. Entertainment is hard to come by when you're stuck inside of a can, transporters always say. 

It's usually something small, a shipment of a few spare parts, nothing so large that it takes very long to ensure that no traces of the virus are present on any surfaces. And this is why their new load of ten boxes too heavy to lift by human strength alone is so _abnormal._

"What if it was like," Gunhee wonders, "people, or something."

"If it is," Yoonho says, "they didn't survive decontamination." It wouldn't be the first time someone tried to sneak onto the home station through a transport ship, after all.

Gunhee tells them, very seriously, "I'm not getting stuck in here with dead bodies next to my room."

Yoosu sighs, harsh, and tells him, _they're not dead bodies,_ at the same time that Seokwon finishes scanning the boxes and says, "It's metal."

"Isn't this too much?" Kwangji asks. 

Seokwon hesitates as he checks the order. "No," he says a few moments later. "This is right."

Yoonho asks him, "What's it for?"

Seokwon shrugs helplessly, as though he's capable of feeling distress.

\---

_"What if,"_ Gunhee asks not long after their scheduled resting hours begin, "they're building a bomb."

Yoonho's gaze stays fixed on the calendar above his bunk and says, "That makes _no sense._ "

"It makes perfect sense," Gunhee says. "It would get rid of the disease once and for all." On the bed below, Yoonho hears Gunhee shift. "They've pretty much given up on Earth anyway."

"And then they'd have to deal with people on the station finding out about it," Yoonho says. "That would be the dumbest political move ever."

Yoosu interrupts, as if he knows, "They're just building more robots. They've still got a long way to go before getting them right."

_"Hey,"_ Yoonho snaps. He hopes Seokwon is out of earshot, even if he might not have feelings to hurt.

Gunhee huffs, and Yoonho hears him fall back on his pillow. "You're wrong," he says simply. "You'll see, soon enough. They have to prioritize someone, and it's not gonna be anyone from down there."

\---

Yoonho doesn't necessarily like listening to Kwangji's stories on those days when he leaves the crew for a few hours to venture deeper into the station. He doesn't get enjoyment from it, and there's never nothing particularly interesting to share, Kwangji usually says--just brief meetings among other captains, where they talk about assigning missions and travel routes and give status reports of the integrity of their ships. Gunhee is the first to tune him out, and Yoonho supposes that Seokwon sticks around to listen because he has to, but sometimes Yoonho gets the feeling that there must be more to say, if only so he can keep chasing the high of satisfaction. 

"We live in a _can,_ " Yoonho says. "There has to be _something_ you saw in there to talk about."

Kwangji shrugs and smiles apologetically. "Just a bigger can," he says.

For a while, Yoonho accepts that answer because he can believe it; there would be no reason to waste effort on a building that's only a temporary stop on a planet people can't remember. 

"Did you at least _hear_ anything?" Yoonho tries. 

"I've heard lots of things," Kwangji says. When Yoonho leans forward, pleading, Kwangji tells him, "I promise that if there's anything worthwhile, you'll be the first to know."

Yoonho sighs, drawn out, but doesn't press.

\---

By the time they arrive back at the home station, most of the other transport ships have already begun to leave. There's a constant flow of traffic despite their distance and independence from Earth, deliveries and returns always being shipped or people traveling between home stations, and Yoonho wonders sometimes how they've managed to keep themselves isolated for so long when there is so much opportunity for contact.

They leave their ship behind for routine inspection and head for the common area in the sublevels of the station where all transporters reside between missions, with the exception of Seokwon who continues beyond the security point for his own functional testing.

They watch Seokwon disappear around the corner, and Minkyun says, "I want to know what they do out there."

It's not much, if Seokwon's accounts are anything to go by, so much like Kwangji's stories. Long hallways, a few offices, elevators, and nothing that would even catch the interest of a crew that has spent their entire lives locked away in essentially three rooms. Then again, Seokwon only goes to the labs and back, and as Gunhee has said before, anything interesting is worth hiding.

"It's just a giant house," Yoosu tells him dismissively.

Minkyun frowns, apparently unsatisfied, and pokes at his lunch.

"There has to be something," Gunhee says. "We're not the only ones with weird cargo."

Yoonho watches the deliveries being brought in from the loading docks--crate after crate that clearly requires no small effort to move--and wonders.

\---

Yoonho thinks about what the people still on Earth must think of the home station.

He's thought about life on Earth, and wondered what it must be like planetside based only on what he can see through the windows, just as he wonders what the rest of their home station must be like based on the stories he's heard from the androids and the advertisements he's seen on television. He is one of the people who have been trained to visit both worlds, but he has no idea what either is like beyond the fact that people have died to to get to where they are.

"People have been delivering vaccinations to Earth for years," Yoonho says, that night. "Do you think they actually help?"

Kwangji taps at their ship's controls mindlessly, searching. "We can only assume we wouldn't be wasting fuel otherwise."

It's the logical answer, but it doesn't sit right with Yoonho.

\---

"We keep coming back because these 'vaccinations' aren't to treat the disease," Gunhee says cryptically.

Yoosu tells him, "Talk like you make sense."

" _Listen._ " Gunhee shifts in his seat and leans his weight on the table until his chest is resting on his hands. "The only people who think these actually work are the people getting them."

"So why spend time and money delivering so many?" Yoonho argues.

Gunhee huffs. "Why spend time and money making something _that actually works_ to give to people who aren't even allowed to breathe our air? It's all about numbers."

Yoonho says, "Yeah, and means there are a _lot_ of things to deliver for nothing."

And Gunhee tells him, "That means there are a lot of unhappy people."

\---

"Alright," Yoosu admits during their next delivery to Earth and back only a few days later. "This is kind of weird."

Gunhee shuts the door to the cargo bay behind them once they've finished securing the boxes of assortments of metals. None of them mention it again for the rest of their trip.

\---

As it turns out, it doesn't take long to discover the answer to the mystery. 

The frequent trips to Earth continue, though instead of their usual mission of delivering vaccinations, their journeys are purely for bringing materials back. 

"I've been saying it all along," Gunhee informs them. "Once they get what they need, this bridge to Earth is burning."

Within the next few missions, the home station begins airing advertisements for organ transplants--new and designed to be impervious to any disease or injury--now being sold. No one will ever have to keep track of their vaccinations again.

"So, robots, basically." Yoosu says. "I win."

"This wasn't a _game,_ " Gunhee tells him, but still makes a scene as he leaves from their table in the mess hall.

Yoosu says, "It's a good idea, in theory."

"Why would anyone want to be a robot?" Seokwon asks. 

Everybody has the decency not to answer.

\---

By the next time they visit Earth, it becomes clear how fast word can travel across thousands of miles. People are always desperate to receive vaccines for themselves and their loved ones; Yoonho has seen the queues lined up outside of the medical tents surrounding the station, but he has never seen any crowd as large as the one amassing when they arrive. What was once a parking lot is full of people crashing into each other just like the waves off-shore.

"Who's going to break it to them that no one's wasting money on operating on anybody down here?" Yoosu wonders.

"They're provided doctors," Seokwon reminds him. "They just have limited resources."

A moment passes before Gunhee says, slow and certain, "What if they _didn't."_

Yoonho's eyes narrow. "What are you talking about?"

Gunhee tells him, "Think about who controls the resources."

It takes Yoonho a while to fall asleep that night, and when he does, it's unrestful.


End file.
